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Funcom No Longer Making Offline Games
1up has commentary from Funcom, makers of games such as Anarchy Online, Dreamfall, and Longest Journey. The developer has taken the drastic step of deciding to cease creation of games without an online component. The company's CEO pins the blame squarely on game piracy. "Several stats he listed were startling if ... true, including that 200,000 illegal copies of Dreamfall had been downloaded before the game was even released and anywhere from three to ten copies of any PC game are pirated for each one sold. Adventure Gamers suggests that future offline games such as Dreamfall Chapters may require an active internet connection to prove authenticity when you play, similar to how Steam works."
200,000 illegal copies of Dreamfall had been downloaded before the game was even released
So, where did the original come from?
It will definitely stop piracy, because we all know HalfLife2 simply cannot be played without a valid Steam account....
There really isn't any comparison between WOW and single player "offline" games that "require" an internet connection to play. Something like Half-Life 2 having to "authenticate" to play is ridiculous...whereas for WOW there would be no way NOT to do it. WOW is a lot more than just a game, it's a persistant online world...there would be no way to implement that type of game without a network connection. WOW doesn't sell like hotcakes because you have to buy it...it sells like hotcakes because it's a really well done game. The price is reasonable ($19 for the game w/first month free, $15/month) for an online game you can play with your friends with millions of players. $15 for a month of WOW is very cheap, entertainment/$ wise. Sure, Burning Crusade costs $40, but it's not required, and if you think of it as a one-time fee to add additional content without any increase in the monthly fee, it's not really that bad. A company that makes bad games trying to reduce "piracy" by adding authentication to single player games is just signing their death warrant.
The gaming industry is a funny place really, we the gamers want good innovative games with breath taking storytelling but whenever such a game arrives for the PC it ends up with horrible sales because it gets heavily pirated. So naturally smaller companies, one example being trokia, dies down due to lack of willing investors while giant companies like Blizzard and EA triumphs on by selling the same mainstream games year in and year out.
No I'm not a big fan of hefty anti piracy, but then I guess you need it in a world where people don't pay you unless they have too - whether they love the game or not. - Going for consoles is another sollution, one that has carried companies like bioware far.
Assuming his number are correct, I'd say the only thing it really shows for sure is that for every person willing to buy and play a game at their asking price, there are a three to ten people willing to play the game at some price lower than that. True, that price may be zero for some or all of them.
But what if two of those ten would be willing to pay it at half the price? So instead of one player at original price, you get three at half price. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that would be an increase in sales, and most likely an increase in profits. This is especially true when you sell online and cut out a lot of the distribution costs.
Their problem with the alleged 200k copies being pirated before release has nothing to do with "normal" piracy. Those people did not choose to pirate a game rather than buy it, as the option to buy it wasn't available. That's a completely different ball of wax.
So really, all those number say to me is that there is a possible untapped potential. It does not say "we're losing the full price that three to ten copies would have made for every one we sell, because all of those people would have bought the game if they couldn't pirate it." That's RIAA math.